Gallows Humour | Watty's 2023

The Straight Line

Woozy, dry-mouthed, and in general grouchy. True sat under a patch of stars that twinkled through a broken ceiling. Big Valdivia's caravan was camped in an old warehouse uncomfortably close to the docks. Fires sprinkled the concrete floor, tended by the more nocturnal caravan travellers. The fires shed warmth and warm light into the cool night, combatting the cold concrete that sapped True's body heat. It was almost kind of comfortable, except for the dull throb in their side, and all the people.

Radio had yet to return. They regretted not wandering off with it. There were too many people here who stared at True too long out of the corners of their eyes. They had their pack back, at least. They held it in their lap, they had waited for the caravan civilians to drift off to bed to start, to shield the process of examining the eviscerated innards of their pack from prying eyes. It felt unbalanced in their hands, they would have known someone had dug around it in even if Big Valdivia hadn't admitted to it.

Biting down the ripple of discomfort with a reminder that they'd left her with no choice, they unsnapped the top of the pack. The handgun winked at them from on top of everything else they owned. They popped the magazine, eyeballed it. Two bullets of the five they had started with remained. If they held still long enough, they could still feel the ghost of the kickback buzzing the spaces between their joints. Tight, pressurized vibrations. Different from the resounding clang that came with striking something with their shovel.

Clicking the magazine back into place, they zipped the gun into a side pocket. In reach but not staining the rest of their things with its oil.

With the efficiency of familiarity, they emptied the rest of the pack. Inventoried. Tucked everything away into its proper spot.

All stuff accounted for, except food. And the salve. There would be a market here tomorrow though. Albeit a regular market, not an After Market, but there were bound to be a few merchants who were willing to deal with a Scavenger.

Laying their head on their pack, a final out-of-place lump prodded them. They reached up and dug it out of the shallow topmost pocket. It came with a crinkle, ancient newspaper folded neatly around a hard object.

A little flat tin fell loose of the paper wrapping and smacked onto their forehead, writing on the lid. An annoyed grimace painted on their face, they twisted it open, peering in at what appeared to be a balm. A tiny purple flower had been pressed into the cream surface, reminiscent of the flowers Radio had fastened to its poncho.

That absolutely did not belong in their pack.

They resealed the tin and tilted it to catch the light of the fire and reveal the words scratched onto the lid.

Balm: self-heal flower, tallow. Cuts, scrapes, bruises.

They recognized Radio's writing from the sand and narrowed their eyes at it. They would ask Radio about it, whenever it poked its head up again.

As if summoned by their thoughts, Radio's shape blotted out the stars over their head. It wobbled there, as if watching them, then shuffled out of sight. True propped themself up on an elbow to watch it, but it didn't go far. Crunching down in a tight little ball right on the border between one shovel-length away, and the edge of the ring of light cast by the nearest fire. It ignored True, and True was inclined to ignore it, too, in favour of going back to sleep. Or brooding some more. Until it brushed a pesky clump of hair out of its face and a glimmer of firelight caught on damp tracks on its cheeks.

Well, shit, that looked like a problem.

They sat up slow, in part not to startle it and in part because ow.

"Where are you hurt?" They whispered, narrowing their eyes at the lump of black rags as if they'd be able to infrared-vision through the dark and the fabric. Radio shook its head, scrubbing its face.